As bizarre as all this may seem to the uninitiated, Yaakov Ariel makes clear in Evangelizing the Chosen People that the aforementioned event is simply part of the latest chapter in an ongoing story within American religious history. Going where no scholar has gone before, Ariel recounts the history of Protestant missions to the Jews in the United States. Making good use of missions’ organization records and the writings of Jewish converts to Christianity, Ariel divides his narrative into three parts: evangelizing Jewish immigrants (1880–1920); evangelizing the children of Jewish immigrants (1920–1965); and evangelizing Jewish Baby Boomers (1965–2000). The last section is particularly compelling, as Ariel describes the emergence of Jews for Jesus—an aggressively evangelistic organization with roots in the 1960s counterculture—and Messianic Judaism, with its emphasis on “amalgamating the Christian faith with Jewish heritage.”
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/bill_trollinger/36/
The document available for download is a pre-copyedited, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in the Journal of American History following peer review. To view the version of record, use the DOI provided.
Citation information for the book: Yaakov Ariel. Evangelizing the Chosen People: Missions to the Jews in America, 1880-2000. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 2000. ISBN: 978-0-8078-4880-7